Shimon Peres

You are Shimon Peres, the world’s best-networked politician, and you are having a dozen or two of your closest head-of-state friends over to stay.

So how do you make each of these national heads (current or recent) feel that “he” is your special friend, smoothing over explosively clashing egos and defusing diplomatic minefields while paying just enough attention to the other 3,500 guests you are having round?

Simple: you call in your bestest-of-all statesman friend, Tony Blair, and anoint him your very own Schmoozemaster General.

It has often been said that Israeli President Shimon Peres likes to get close to the ladies — well, now he will get his chance to get very close indeed. Israeli fashion designer Galit Levi has come up with a dress printed with the face of Peres and several of his predecessors to celebrate the 60th anniversary of independence. Let’s hope that whoever wears it looks more alluring than some of the rather serious-looking elderly men featured on it.

A Jewish journalist has split community opinion by calling publicly for a militant Jewish body to be banned.

Frederic Haziza, the political editor of French Jewish radio station J, wrote an opinion piece in the national Liberation newspaper demanding the small, right-wing Jewish Defence League body be dismantled.

The group, which claims 200 members, has been accused of assaults on anti-Israeli and revisionist figures and violent demonstrations, but denies any involvement in such incidents.

Israeli president Shimon Peres is to visit Warsaw next week to mark the 65th anniversary of the ghetto uprisings. Polish-born Mr Peres will join other dignitaries, including the mayors of around 30 European and Israeli, on April 15 for a ceremony with Polish President Lech Kaczynski at the monument to the Ghetto in central Warsaw.